Theology

Have you ever done something you immediately regret? Perhaps you’ve let your emotions get the better of you, lost control and said something particularly harsh to a friend in the heat of a moment—you wish you could take the words back the moment they left your lips.

Some people regret the big choices they’ve made in life; others regret that life has not given them a choice.

In the opening scene of The Good Place, celestial being Michael (Ted Danson) explains that most world religions and philosophies get their respective understandings of the afterlife only about five per cent right.

"To feel that you have meaning is to feel immortal," psychology professor and author Clay Routledge wrote in 2014. Is this the only kind of immortality we will ever have?

Soviet soldier Bakhretdin Khakimov was declared missing in action during the war in Afghanistan, which claimed the lives of 15,000 USSR soldiers and more than a million Afghans. Thirty-three years later, his family found out he was alive, living as a true Afghan among his former enemies.

Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about our future? This is a question even specialists are concerned with, and it cannot be answered easily. It is difficult to predict what the future holds.

Traditional communities are like rivers, while modern societies are like oceans, said Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman. Consider that a river—deeper or shallower, faster or slower—always has a direction, as traditional societies usually direct the lives of their members. The ocean is a different story.

I don’t remember much about the moment. I remember its warmth, and the way it glowed with purpose and spirit. But the stage is blurry. The song which pulsed out from it is uncertain. I know it came from a good friend of mine, one whose spot-lit glory provoked in me no jealousy, no feeling of being left out.

"Western societies have transformed Sundays into days where leisure activities have eclipsed the traditional Christian meaning of the day—to devote time to God", Pope Benedict XVI once said, reminding us that the day of rest is a celebration of God's creation of the world. Observing this day now, when there are worrying signs about the global climate, is a necessity, the Pope added.

It’s not hard to misinterpret the Bible. I’ve done it, most people I know have done it and if you’ve read it enough, I’d bet you’ve done it too. It isn’t surprising then, that throughout history many have misinterpreted the Bible, especially when it comes to complex ideas like the end of the world and Jesus’ second coming.

Courage is not the opposite of fear, nor of caution. True courage is what you do right in the midst of fear.

“Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.” (Jerome Isaac Friedman)

In those times when grief accompanies us and we find ourselves alone in the middle of the night, does God shed tears with us?

Nearly four millennia after the stone ratification of the law on weekly rest, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) reiterates the right of every person to rest and leisure.[1]

The danger of the novel coronavirus has given us pause to reflect. As Christian believers, apart from praying, we are expected to examine and question our beliefs in this time, and to seek answers which are rooted in the perspective of the Holy Scriptures.